i can’t do small talk about climate
and share my timid feelings,
i force delay my texts back,
pressing patience into place.
like guiding myself to reality
where i control how i am,
which has never been easy.
but in the challenge of acting normal
in the prolonged stares at the beach,
after the time someone held ice
on my scrapped teenage knees,
i prepared a novel then too.
even then i lived in prose, never knowing
how to be simple, small, consumable.
instead i’m harder to swallow
than the complete truth,
i want to be like them too -
carrying joy and ease in undertones
instead of an AirTag for a brain,
running lines before getting lost
and like a three week trip in August,
i’m still unpacking how to act right.

nobody has to know about us
sharing longer stares at dinner,
kissing in the elevator up,
wondering about the next mistake,
knowing each others secrets.
trusting it's going to be different,
singing now on the walk home
and eating chicken fingers through confessions.
while i'm still scared to hold your hand,
and it takes four walks a day
to believe it's happening.
we're just a couple teenagers now,
at the skateboard shop on Queen.
trying to draw a line in reason,
so i can finally learn patience, so
nobody has to know about us.

you call me to check in,
assuring me of your new composure
and make bad jokes for hours,
galloping between Dundas & Augusta.
i’ve known you since you were fourteen -
you’re still tormentingly silly
and too easy to lay with.
you never really made me nervous
until this week -
feelings growing out of cement
in age and moments between memories,
falling into places painted over.
i don’t think we ever wanted this
to really be together,
but we can’t seem to get
rid of each other either.
Flinging back into comfort -
do i like him or is it familiar,
why not both?
Let’s sit a while longer this time,
and see if the paint dries differently.

I stayed so long I began to look like you,
and started shrinking into myself,
amnesia to the cold infantile display.
Promises from my own imagination,
and gifts of pretty projection.
Laura you can't change people -
but love, love comes so easily.
But like an expired library book,
with overdue charges and a cliché cover.
You can't blame me for judging.

We belong in this time
of wonder and questioning,
calling strangers home,
and dripping wax seals
on unsent DM's to Diplo.
My algorithm is broken
because I felt safe with you,
after we swam naked in the
Mediterranean Sea at 3AM,
and gave up on planning.
We belong to the sweaty beats
at Electric Island, and the
voices that tell us to slow down.
My voice is broken but bold,
carrying you to solutions
that look like truths.
We belong to no one
but ourselves.

I write about the middle aged
bald guy, giving the finger
to the citibike business bro,
holding a pack of Pabst.
Or about the cold air in August,
when we ran down Ossington
screaming “Feral Girl Summer!”
Maybe I do it to pass the time, or
to relive feelings I can’t forget.
To me it’s all the same -
words pouring onto the sidewalk,
pieces of my Milky’s iced coffee
with painful oat milk affliction.
I write because I’m always bitter,
or because my memories melt?
But mostly because I want you
to read this, instead of me.

sitting with myself,
endless feelings of love,
warm sentiments of care,
no one else to give them too.
as if it goes to waste -
the longing i project
it eats me up inside.
can’t hold this in,
30 elephants sit on my chest,
a lion roaring violently,
with me -
the circus is always in town